Yahoo Lifestyle The Genius Make-Ahead Christmas Cookie Trick We Wish We Knew Sooner
If you give a friend or family member a great Christmas cookie, it has the potential to take their breath away. On the flip side, nothing takes a baker's breath away like realizing that you forgot to add a key leavening ingredient to your recipe, like salt, baking powder or baking soda.
Depending on the baking project—cookies, cakes, brownies—the ratios of ingredients vary greatly. While adding dry ingredients is as easy as following the teaspoon or tablespoon measurements called for in a recipe, it's easier than you think to forget something, especially during the hustle and bustle and exhaustion of the holiday season.
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Even as a food pro, I’ve had to deal with the consequences of mismeasuring an ingredient more times than I want to admit. Flat, bitter and/or tough treats are such a disappointment.
That all changed though when I worked in a number of professional bakeries and learned a genius prep trick: prep your dry ingredients ahead of time. Here's what you need to know to bring this pro trick to your home kitchen.
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Why You Should Pre-Measure Dry Ingredients When Baking
• It doesn't require special tools. In the bakeries where I worked, it was customary to finish a shift by prepping the mise, or the dry ingredient prep, so the next day's baker was equipped to work smarter, not harder. Because the recipes were large-scale, we needed to use large Cambro containers (a brand of large plastic container that you'll see in a lot of professional kitchens) to hold the dry ingredients. At home, you can use what you have. Got some plastic pint containers from takeout? Those work great. A Ziploc bag is also a good option.
• It saves you dishes. This smart prep-ahead trick means you don't have to mix the dry ingredients in one bowl only to dump them in another bowl for mixing, which saves you a dish to wash.
• It makes your baking better. This simple adjustment in your baking routine helps you focus on getting the measurements just right, instead of rushing around to measure things while you're creaming the butter and sugar in the stand mixer. Knowing that your dry ingredients are complete and accurately measured provides peace of mind—small measurement errors can affect the texture, rise, and flavor of your final baked good.
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• It saves you time. Pre-measuring also makes the process smoother by allowing you to focus on combining ingredients rather than pausing to measure mid-recipe. Taking this approach leads to better consistent results (a godsend let's say when you need to make multiple quantities of one cookie recipe) all the while saving you a lot of time.
• It puts the fun back in baking. This is especially true if you're baking this holiday with kids. If you pre-measure your dry ingredients before your little ones come in to help, you can focus on the moment instead of the measurements.
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How to Pre-Measure Dry Ingredients When Baking
It's not rocket science. First, read the recipe—then read it again. It might seem silly, but reading a recipe twice or three times will make it less likely that you'll forget something.
Once you've read the recipe twice over (or more), follow the recipe's ingredient list in sequence, add the dry ingredients into your container of choice—the flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and others—one by one in their listed amounts. Make sure to only pre-measure the dry ingredients that are supposed to be mixed together in the same step, per the instructions. For example, sugar is often creamed with the butter when making cookies, so don't add that to your container. Finally, label your pre-portioned dry ingredients. That way if you want to make-ahead dry ingredients for multiple recipes all at once, it's easier to grab the correct dry ingredients when it's time to bake.
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